(From BikeRumor.com) – We just got our hands on some nifty little internal documents showing that for 2011, Manitou has completely revamped their classic R7 to drop about 40g, improve stiffness and load bearing and make it look much slicker. The new casting brings the R7 down to 2.95lb to 3.05lb, making it one of the lightest fully featured XC forks on the market. Follow up calls ensued:

“Basically, our R7 tooling was worn out and rather than just redo the same thing, we figured we’d use this opportunity to redesign the fork,” says Rich Travis, Manitou’s Product Manager. “So we used FEA design to improve load tolerances and drop weight, and while we were at it we improved mud clearance and made it look better, too…More info here…